(4 hours ago)Storx wrote See if I had a free card I'd swap everything round and do something like
342: Morpeth - Bedlington - East Hartford - Cramlington - Killingworth - Forest Hall - Wallsend (Every 30 Minutes)
43: Curtail at Cramlington
353: Extend to Airport
Having double deckers on the 43 between Cramlington and Morpeth is overkill as an understatement and the route over Cramlington overs nothing anyway as it's just a long X21/X22, depending where you are. There's no real lost links now the 19 exists which is just a faster 353 from Cramlington but there's a fair few new links generated.
You could make a case for flipping the 342 and 353 around in Forest Hall aswell tbh so the 353 serves ASDA and the 342 doesn't have to do a detour to turn around. Unsure how many at the Palmersville side use it though.
I can tell you now flipping the 342 and 353 wouldn't go down well, the 342 has served ASDA since (atleast) the days of the 319 and to be honest is no different to when the 343/344/355 detoured to the bus stop that used to be outside the Pennine Showroom, even the 322 did it back in the day when it ran to Four Lane Ends, yes you can argue that some people would get off at Killingworth to do their shopping at Morrisons, but not all people do and do prefer ASDA, you'd also be cutting off Forest Hall South (before/after the flyover) and Benton if the 342 was stopped from serving ASDA, there's likely other reasons as to why it wouldn't be wise, but on an unrealated topic, if its any service that needs sorting out, its that stupid routing of the 356 when its bound for Newcastle, it also usually turns up at the same time as the one bound for Whitley Bay, there is no reason why it can't do what the Arriva 351 used to do around Feetham Avenue/Meadway, it used to use the bus stop's on the other side of the road as a guide as to where to pickup/drop off, in a perfect world the 355 would be every half an hour to maintain the 1 stop that would be left out if the 356 were rerouted when its bound for Newcastle